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 REVIEW School's Out Screenwriter Kevin Williamson creates a trite, predictable mess with his newest teen-scream The Faculty. BY KIM MORGAN |
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Screenwriter Kevin Williamson is the biggest sham in Hollywood. The supposed Wunderkind, responsible for the wildly popular and vastly overrated Scream series, the brain behind the awful I Know What You Did Last Summer pictures, and the creator of Warner Brothers Network's teen drama, Dawson's Creek, is simply an overrated hack. Heralded by many as a clever satirist and fresh genius, responsible for revitalizing the dormant teen-horror genre, Williamson is not worthy of his status as spokesman for teen pop culture. True, he has made teen slasher movies popular again (a good thing), but only because he has no competition. John Carpenter is doing other projects, Freddy is dead, and movies as good as Brian DePalma's Carrie aren't being produced anymore. Williamson doesn't even have nudity in his films. He does, however, abuse irony with winks, nudges and Tarantino-esque pop-culture moves. This supposedly hip technique is neither scary nor clever. Instead, it is obvious and hackneyed. Referential humor is clever only when in the hands of a truly intelligent writer--like Daniel Waters, who wrote the best teen film of the '80s: Heathers. So where is Waters, the guy responsible for the eloquent phrase: "Fuck me gently with a chainsaw!"? Doesn't he know that Hollywood needs him to make more high-school hell movies? Just shut your eyes and remember this scene from Heathers: Popular super-bitch Heather number one is poisoned by misanthropic teens played by Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, and her last gasps for life include the desperate cry, "Cornnuts!" This one moment of hilariously evil high-school revenge transcends any entire movie that Williamson has ever written. Perhaps watching The Faculty will convince Waters to come back because Williamson, that knight in bloody armor for the teen set, has made a horrible mess of horror. The one thing that might have saved this project was the directing talent of Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn). With Rodriguez on board there was a hope that, as when Wes Craven directed and saved the first Scream, The Faculty would be tight and entertaining. Not so. The usually interesting and outrageously flashy touch of Rodriguez is nowhere to be found in this picture. Not one stylistic flourish, not one bullet-soaked bloodbath has his name on it. The only whiff of Rodriguez is actress Salma Hayek, who shows up in most of his movies and here plays a high school nurse. Hayek, his good-luck charm, can't even save The Faculty from Williamson's tired script. Too bad the script is so bad; the film's premise (kids are knocking off teachers at Herrington High) is chock-full of possibilities. Herrington High is a wasteland of outdated textbooks, bitter teachers and cynical kids. The classrooms are filthy, the budget is nil, and the teachers are aliens. Really. Six kids who have nothing in common are forced to band together to fight the aliens, who have turned the entire school into a bunch of Stepford-like perfectly behaved young adults with no personalities. The renegade kids include Casey, the school nerd (Elijah Wood); Delilah, the bitchy cheerleader (Jordana Brewster); Stokely, the weirdo outsider (Clea DuVall); Marybeth, the new girl (Laura Harris); Zeke, the genius bad boy (Josh Hartnett) and Stan, the reluctant jock (Shawn Hatosy). All the elements of what could have been keen satire are present--the unforgiving social order of high school, the alienation between young people and adults, the horrifying power and awkwardness of hormones and space invaders. But both Williamson and Rodriguez never go anywhere with these themes. Ironically (nudge, nudge), in the process of criticizing mindless, bland predictability, they in turn make a mindless, bland, predictable movie. The film is also marred by bad computerized special effects and moments that are admittedly (remember this is all "in" humor here) ripped off from The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the Puppet Master series. The characters are so poorly drawn that we neither bond with them nor particularly like or even hate them. Though some of the young actors are accomplished (especially Elijah Wood), and a few of the teachers are perfectly cast (Terminator 2's Robert Patrick as the football coach), they are never allowed to bob up from the oppressively trite script and non-suspenseful direction. It's all a waste. That is because of Williamson, who, to be fair, is at least a savvy
trend spotter. He's just a shitty writer. Why don't the studios consider
Waters for their next teen-scream? If a man can write a movie that shines
simply because a pretty girl utters "Cornnuts," then he, not Kevin Williamson,
could really be our Knight.
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